Gridiron Glory 25: Where Are They Now? 740 Zone Host Jacob Murray and Producer Michael Roth

While we are celebrating 25 seasons of Gridiron Glory, there was one year that the show did not go on. In 2020, the Ohio University students who produce, report and host Gridiron, were sent home for safety reasons due to the COVID-19 pandemic. WOUB could not support production of the show in the fall of 2020. But the students refused to let that stop the coverage of high school football in southeast Ohio.

“There were about 15 juniors and seniors who wanted continue covering high school football, continue advancing as journalists and not sit out an entire semester,” said Michael Roth, a journalism news and information major that graduated in 2022. “We all had housing arrangements in Athens, and we hopped on a couple of Zooms throughout the summer to figure it all out.”

What came out of those calls was the birth of an online program called 740 Zone. The students created social media pages and recorded a weekly show covering southeast Ohio football to fill the void left without Gridiron Glory.

“It was my junior year,” said Roth. “I had already been working on Gridiron for two years, so I had a good idea of what needed to be done.”

The first important decision that had to be made was to name a host. The group decided that the host would be Jacob Murray, a senior news and information major at the time.

“If I’m being honest, it took a little bit of convincing because I wasn’t sure how we’d do it,” said Murray. “But knowing that the communities appreciated Gridiron and the coverage they got from WOUB like they did, that’s the major reason why I decided to do it.”

However, getting a show together was an uphill battle. Because of the university pandemic rules around students being on campus and travel outside of Athens County, the 740 Zone crew did not have any access to WOUB’s equipment or facilities. So, the production was put together with whatever the students could get their hands on.

“We recorded it at Jacob Murray’s house on his second-floor balcony,” said Roth. “We treated it like a live show on air, but we did it live to tape and made edits after the recording. We posted content to our social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter, and the full-length episodes were posted to YouTube.”

740 Zone gained a following quickly. There were more than 1000 followers on both Facebook and Twitter. Due to the pandemic, the high school football season was shortened and attendance at games was limited.

“We felt like there still was a market for and desire for those teams to be covered, even more so because of the limited attendance,” said Roth.

“Even with masks on, we could tell the kids and coaches were smiling,” said Murray. “It gave us a reason to go and do something, and we were proud of it.”

Roth went on to become the season 22 producer of Gridiron Glory and currently works as a senior scout at Prep Hoops Ohio. Murray is now a news producer at Fox 19 TV in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Both are proud of what they did to keep the mission of Gridiron going during the pandemic and are proud to see Gridiron hit its 25th season still going strong.

“When I got there in 2017, I heard about everything the people before had done with the show,” said Murray. “And now the product has grown and expanded even more. They’ve added some schools because of what was covered during 740 Zone. To know you were part of it, it’s pretty cool to see and think about.”

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